W.H. delays Obamacare deadline

The Obama administration has extended the deadline for signing up for health care coverage until midnight Tuesday.

In the latest high-profile delay in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the White House quietly decided to give people more time to register for health care plans that would begin on Jan. 1. The previous deadline was midnight Monday.

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“Anticipating high demand and the fact that consumers may be enrolling from multiple time zones, we have taken steps to make sure that those who select a plan through tomorrow will get coverage for Jan 1,” Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services spokeswoman Julie Bataille said in a statement Monday.

An administration official added that, “We have programmed our systems to support Jan. 1 coverage for those who attempt to complete their enrollment through the end of the day tomorrow proactively recognizing that we need to be prepared to handle heavy online traffic or other technical issues.”

The one-day delay came amid a huge increase in traffic on HealthCare.gov. As of 2 p.m. EST, about 850,000 visitors had gone to the website — five times more than the traffic last Monday, according to Bataille. The site saw more than 1.2 million visitors over the weekend.

The enrollment portal held up despite the surge, but consumers did get put into the “virtual waiting room” queue when volume hit about 600,000 users just before 11 a.m. The overall error rate for that traffic averaged less then 0.4 percent, she said.

The new deadline announced Monday applies to coverage starting in January, but people have until March 31 to apply for health coverage that starts later in 2014.

The Washington Post first reported the one-day delay. That was followed by a series of contradictory statements from the administration, which compared the extension to allowing people in line on Election Day to vote after the polls closed.

Despite the extension, the administration maintains that people shouldn’t wait until Christmas Eve to do last-minute health plan shopping.

“You should not wait until tomorrow. If you are aiming to get coverage Jan. 1, you should try to sign up today,” an official said.

President Barack Obama did not wait until the last minute. He signed up for a bronze plan over the weekend, the White House said. However, it was a symbolic move as the president receives health care through the military.

Some states followed suit, allowing enrollment to go through Dec 24, or even later. But others stuck with the Monday night deadline. The changes and variations could add to the widespread confusion and misunderstandings that have shown up in public opinion polling about the health law.

Insurance companies said they would try to assist consumers in responding to the latest deadline change.

“Health plans will continue to do everything they can to help consumers through the enrollment process and mitigate potential confusion or disruption caused by all of these last-minute changes to the rules and deadlines,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans.

Dec. 23 was supposed to be the first hard deadline for the Affordable Care Act since the disastrous Oct. 1 debut of HealthCare.gov. It was also the most significant stress test for the website itself since Nov. 30, the date the administration promised to have online enrollment working smoothly for the “vast majority” of Americans. By Dec. 1, it had largely met that goal.

Enrollment figures for December, a critical barometer of public response, are not expected until January. But Obama said last week that more than 1 million people were now signed up for coverage in the new health insurance exchanges. And that didn’t count this last minute rush.

The White House wants a strong finish in December after two months of website woes, slow enrollment and widespread accusations that the president lied when he pledged that Americans would be able to keep health plans they liked under Obamacare.

The White House says that fewer than a half-million people whose plans had been canceled were still looking for replacement coverage as of late last week, but the political fallout from the cancellations has been damaging. Poll numbers for both the president and the health law dropped this fall.

A CNN/ORC International poll, released Monday, found Obamacare’s approval rating at its lowest point since the summer of 2011 — 35 percent, down from 40 percent last month. And a new Gallup poll, also out Monday, reported that more Americans see the law as the president’s biggest failure — 36 percent — than his greatest achievement — 22 percent.

While the administration outlines its narrative of new coverage options and a higher performing enrollment system, opponents say Obamacare is crumbling just days before the new benefits start. As further proof that it’s not ready for prime time, they point to what until Monday was the latest regulatory delay: the administration’s announcement late last week that people who had health plans canceled in 2013 can get an exemption from the individual mandate in 2014.

Consumers who sign up before the deadline will have until Jan. 10 to pay most insurers, under an agreement between the White House and the industry. Coverage would still start retroactively on Jan. 1.

The Obama administration had always expected enrollment spikes around this first coverage milestone and again just before March 31. But the surge this week could be even bigger considering the website was largely inoperable for the first two months of the six-month enrollment period.

The administration had asked insurance companies to bend the deadlines for getting coverage and paying for it. Both were moved back more than a week — from Dec. 15 to Dec. 23 for applying and from Dec. 31 to Jan. 10 for paying. The shifting calendar has confused some consumers and has insurers worrying that people will think they’re enrolled when they’re not.

HealthCare.gov is serving as the enrollment portal in 36 states. In the other 14 states plus District of Columbia, which are running their own exchanges, the performance of the websites has varied, and the deadlines differ.

New York and Massachusetts, for instance, are giving people until Tuesday night. California, Washington state and the District of Columbia haven’t officially changed the date but promised flexibility — and Jan 1 coverage — for people who started but couldn’t complete their applications by the 11:59 p.m. Monday deadline.